Why Do You Need a Prototype for Your Product?

Do you have a brilliant idea for a new project? What will you do first? How quickly can you understand that your project is viable and exciting for consumers?

It’s unlikely that you’ll rush headlong into the maelstrom because before starting work on the website, mobile application, or any other software, you must first consider all possible scenarios and details. Namely, how users will interact with your product through its interface, content, buttons, page transitions, pop-ups, and so on.

When it comes to designing the interface of an app, a user experience (UX) should be directly in the spotlight. UX is how a user perceives a product and what his approach to interacting with its interface is. In other words, the ease of use. Wait. How can you define that the projected UX is convenient and effective for users?

There are many methods and tools, among which we single out a prototype as a guarantee of design success.

The prototype allows us to:

• Evaluate interactions in the product interface;
• Find out how a product may be perceived by users;
• Evaluate results and create an effective development strategy for your product.

A common misconception is that customers and users usually don’t understand the real purpose of the prototypes, expecting to receive a ready-made product. We want to dispel this myth and explain that a prototype is not the end product! The prototype is the preparatory stage in the process of creating a software design.

Before you submit your idea to the world, it’s necessary to work out the first vision of your product. Prototypes perfectly carry out this critical task. Using them, you receive a schematic image of future pages of a website or application with all included elements like menu, buttons, banners, forms for data entry, and so on. It’s a picture that clearly represents the approximate appearance and functionality of the desired product.

How the prototypes work

It’s one thing to describe a future product in words, and really quite another breed of cat to evaluate it visually. For this purpose, large development companies provide services for creating prototypes. Instead of empty promises, a client is offered to familiarize himself with the layout of the desired product and even test it in real time. This approach allows us to immediately see which parts should be changed or completely obliterated.

For example, you’re sure that these two banners will look great next to each other. To check out your idea, you use a prototype, place banners side by side and… find out that in practice, these elements are incompatible. Or, it seems to you that this CTA button should be placed right, while a prototype shows that it looks most harmoniously in the center of a block. The main advantage of a prototype is that it helps you visualize different ideas and come up with a winning solution.

Fixing flaws after the launch will be a long and expensive procedure. So, the prototypes are used to prevent all possible shortcomings in the final product. With the help of this tool, you can easily swap elements, reduce or enlarge something, repaint or replace components until getting total satisfaction with the appearance and functionality of a software.

How prototypes increase the speed of development

The world practice and my experience show that the introduction of a prototype accelerates the development process due to several significant factors:

• Time

Pre-creating a working prototype, you save a lot of development time. In our case, time is money, so using an innovative prototype approach, you can start earning even earlier than some of your conservative competitors. Having a ready-made prototype of your website or app, with all the corrections and comments, there will be no time and money expenditures, including the time your development team spends on reworking the final product.

• Preliminary version of a design

A prototype is similar to a project drawing. With its help, you’re able to look at the design with architecture in perspective that will offer a terrific opportunity to decide on further layout and structure.

• Getting reviews

Are you sure that users will do justice to your product? A prototype ensures this reaction, as it represents a great way to visually communicate with people. Just show your friends and family a visualized idea, and get their opinion. Analyzing their feedback, you can make any adjustments to the project at the early stages of development.

• Functionality and ease of us

In order to assess the usability and functionality of any application or website, it’s necessary to get rid of all distracting details of UI design (colors, fonts, images, etc.). UI design aspects aren’t important for us at this moment. Initially, we must direct all efforts to the UX design, creating a prototype which allows us to pre-design a location of the main elements of a software, be more flexible and test different options.

Types of the prototypes

So, are you interested in creating a prototype to receive a final product much faster and avoid unnecessary actions and expenditures? Realization of this reasonable solution requires a particular preparation and plan. First, you need to determine which exactly prototype will be appropriate for your project. The prototypes are divided into two general types: paper prototypes and interactive prototypes. Which one is better? We won’t give you a definite answer, as the choice entirely depends on your goals and the project complexity, but we want to acquaint you more closely with them.

Paper prototypes

This is a real treasure for those who like drawing. The main advantage of paper prototypes is that you use pencil sketches which form the basis of the design process. Such prototypes can include sketches depicting different states of screens, cards with drop-down menus, stickers, images of modal windows, and other objects. A designer can erase any unnecessary elements and quickly make changes based on user feedback. However, when we talk about designing software, a choice of a paper prototype isn’t an optimal solution due to the lack of provided interactivity. For example, you have an idea to place two text blocks nearby and draw them on a paper. You like how they look on the paper and is sure that on a final layout their appearance will be the same. Just hold on a minute here. Who knows how they will work in a real app or website? What if the first block will be loaded faster than another? Or maybe they will be unnecessary here, and you’ll have to remove or move them. Especially to prevent all these doubts and questions, interactive(clickable) prototypes come to your rescue. They serve to immediately show you how your idea will work, and whether it’s necessary to make any adjustments.

Interactive prototypes

Creation of an interactive prototype is a more complex process that allows you to design an unlimited number of screens using special programs like Axure, Mockplus, Justinmind, InVision, and others. Although clickable prototypes require more time and efforts than paper, this contribution will be fully compensated by a high level of interactivity. The interactive prototypes can have a different degree of accuracy and detailing that is determined by the intended purpose of design. If it’s necessary to focus on improving a UI design, you need to create a high-precision prototype with the final set of elements. Then, a UI designer will only have to “cover” these elements with colors, replace fonts, add backgrounds, paste texts, and select appropriate images. And if your main goal is to study the peculiarities of user interaction with an app interface and get a general sense from using a product, you can confine to a small detailed prototype, saving time and concentrating on strategic issues.

In general, both paper and interactive prototypes help to get rid of a superfluous headache during project development. As you can see, making changes to the final prototype is much easier and faster than to final design, not to mention a product layout. No matter how simple the phrases about prototyping sound, in reality, the UX design, particularly the prototypes, are a whole science with its own set of rules, standards, and schemes. To create a quality prototype, you should be armed with specialized knowledge and understanding of how it’s built from within.

Creation of a prototype from the scratch

A process of creating a prototype can be divided into three consecutive tasks:

1. Analysis of a market

A designer, before starting to work regularly explores many sites and other resources to find unusual and trendy interface solutions (buttons, text layouts, the structure of pages, and so on). At this stage, it’s necessary to figure out common elements, because most likely, an average user has already got used to them. For example, we always seek a menu at the top of a page, as it’s the most widespread placement for this element. When we want to close a window, we immediately focus our attention to the top right corner, because a cross symbol typically is located there. That’s why it’s so crucial for a designer to be aware of standard UX design solutions and approaches to providing an effective user experience.

2. Software prototyping

As we’ve mentioned earlier, a prototype can be created using special programs or on paper. However, we want to consider the creation of interactive ones. Generally, the prototyping process begins with the definition of a structure and creation of a map of the future product. A designer determines the type and purpose of a product, its functionality, number of pages and features, and other significant aspects. Only after that, a UX designer starts designing the main page and other pages, for example, contacts, about the company, portfolio, order form, etc. The main task at this stage is to add all interface elements and write a logic to these elements so that they will work and interact with each other, depending on user actions

3. Test and completion

When the first version of a prototype is already created, it must be tested. The expert checks how well the prototype is developed in terms of user-friendliness and aesthetics of the interface elements arrangement. During the test, the moments that need correction are identified, and new requirements for the future product often appear. For example, expansion of the functionality, addition or removal of a button, addition of a new section to the menu or removal of the unnecessary one, and so on. All these adjustments are made within several minutes with the help of innovative UX tools. As a result, you receive a ready-made model of your future product, which will be just improved by other leading specialists up to the ready flawless software.

A prototype is a powerful tool

The creation of a prototype is the most essential part of the UX design process. Especially if the purpose of your product is an establishment of effective interaction with users. Of course, a ready prototype isn’t a final development stage, but nevertheless, it allows to prevent severe mistakes and reduced risks. Moreover, the earlier you get feedback from users, the higher the chances you have to win their loyalty in the future.

Are you ready to experience the thunderous power of our prototypes? In a 30-minutes online consultation, our PROTOS team will find the best way of visualizing your idea and turning it into reality with the help of innovative MVP approach.

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